Robert Burns was a big litrature dude (he wrote Auld Lang Syne)and my husbands aunt always dissappears off for Burns night in January.

I decided this warrented a post as this is a dinner to celebrate the poets life and works and is held around his birthday the 25th of January. This year it is the 250th anniversary and there are year long events going on. Furthure info on this can be found at Home Coming Scoutland.

Then, horn for horn, they stretch an’ strive:
Deil tak the hindmaist! on they drive,
Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve,
Are bent like drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
“Bethankit” hums.

Is there that o’re his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi’ perfect scunner,
Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu’ view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro’ bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

The old addage Breakfast is the most important meal of the day turns out to be correct from a nutritional and medical point of veiw and it turns out there is a whole week dedicated to it!

Farmhouse Breakfast Week starts on the 25th of January this year and goes on until the 31st. There site has quiet a few recipys and nutritional information on it that I thought people might find usefull.

They seem to have been around for an age (2003) but I found out about it from on of those super market magizines.

Personally I had crumpets toasted with a drizzel of honey on them – bliss 😉

For my birthday this year my husband made me a butterfly cake with left overs from Christmas – ie the swiss roll and chocolate that never got turned into my classic christmas log I’ve been making since I was thirteen!

He started by making a butterfly shape out of the large swiss roll – he says this involved cake maths as he had to work out how to make a whole butterfly out of one roll. He cut four equal slices off for the wings and then cut the remainder of the log up so that it could form the base of the body.

He then broke the chocolate up into squares and placed into our old milk pan which is tall an narrow. He then held this in a suacepan of water which was actually on the heat – this is really important as chocolate burns if in direct contact with the heat and is easily spoilt.

Once melted he drizzeled it over the cake using spoons to pick up the chocolate that run off of the cake and drizzling it in the gaps. This produced a messy look and chocolate icing would have produced a better finish but then he did not know this and we didn’t have any chocolate icing anyway!

He then sprinkeled rainbow hundreds and thousands onto the butterflies body.

Then mauve sugar crystals from a Barbie cake decorating set onto the wings.

As furthure ornimentation to the wings he added some cake decoration jelly lemon and orange slices to the wings.

He had to add the candle holders whilst the chocolate was still molten other wise it would have cracked the chocolate.

He brought it out at the end of a cheese fondue for me. More on the actual celebration can be read about on our personal blog Snell-Pym.

My husband loves fudge and I normally buy him some for Christmas but I didn’t get out in time this year to pick him up some so I thought I’d have ago at making him some – but as always I had slightly the wronge ingredients and decided to sort of make up my own recipy as I went along.

I used:

Condensed milk (the recipie I had found all called for evaporated milk which basically doesn’t have the added sugar but I didn’t have any of that in the cupboard)

Sugar

Candied mixed peel

Finailly chopped hazelnuts

Some christmas dry fruit mix

One teaspoon full of Allspice

I placed the condednsed milk and sugar in a pan and then was supposed to stir it untill all the sugar had dissolved but the heat was too much and I feared it would burn so I just poured in the other ingredients and stirred them in.

I then spooned the mix (it was so thick I had to use a second spoon to push the mix off of the first spoon) into some tin pie cases I had. It filled two of these shallow dishes and was absolutely chock full of the fruit and nuts so that the ‘fudge’ formed just a sort of cement or matrix for it.

My husband likes this very much and says it tastes like mince pies and fudge and is very christmassy and that the guys at the office have requested more